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Handbrewing Coffee

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Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#191

Post by joezydeco »

stcredzero wrote: post #182
Tarks wrote: post #95

For anyone interested I did a fair bit of research into how I could step into the passable home espresso / coffee game as I WFH a lot. Given that : - I make at most 3 coffees a day, usually 1. - I prefer espresso I found the traditional options lacking. I'd need: - a machine costing about £600 - a solid quality grinder. - machine needs 20 minutes warmup minimum before you can pour a consistent shot (or you need to le…

My alternative for about $45 US in equipment. Buy an Aeropress (~$30) and a cheap hand burr grinder from Amazon. (~$11) Always buy freshly roasted beans. Read and follow the instructions that come with Aeropress. Water temperature matters! Stirring duration matters! But if you can simply follow instructions, it's very easy to get consistent results. If you're a bit lazy, you can substitute a cheap blade grinder, and…

I’m super lazy. I skip all the beans and grinding and just use Cafe Bustelo. It’s great coffee and works really well in an Aeropress.

$4 per 10 ounce can.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#192

Post by PascLeRasc »

GreaterFool wrote: post #107

In one of the companies I worked for we had this really nice semi-automatic espresso machine. The type where you have to unscrew the handle, put the grounds in. I loved making coffee in it! A little break from coding, some manual task to do. Make the coffee, steam the milk, clean up. It was a nice little break. Then some part broke and instead of fixing it the company bought the fully automatic machine. It was downri…

I've had a Jura at three jobs now and they've all been consistently mediocre. Its espresso is super watery and feels like there's some missing flavor. I strongly prefer my Aeropress for both flavor and the ritual of using it.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#193

Post by js2 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #189
js2 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife makes her coffee in an moka pot. IMO it's fine for cafe cubano or maybe a latte, but I'd never drink it straight. It's much too bitter and lacks the natural sweetness and full body of a proper espresso shot. So while you can make passable espresso-type drinks with it, it's not really espresso.

Can I ask what grind you're using? I'm a big fan of the bitterness of what my moka pot produces, though I agree that it's not "espresso" per se. It's fantastic for mixing with vanilla ice cream or mixed drinks.

Espresso grind (fine). Just slightly finer than I grind for using in an Aeropress. To give an idea, my grinder scale is 1-34. I use 1 for Turkish, she likes 5 in the Moka, I use 6 in my Aeropress. Drip is ~12. French press is ~18.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#194

Post by PascLeRasc »

lostlogin wrote: post #117
ip26 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even like sorting by size would be difficult. All you need is a sieve-like machine with different size holes & hoppers for each. Or a sluice-box, or one of many other ways to accomplish this. If it made a huge difference in quality, and it was not hard to do- everyone would be doing it. And indeed, they are. WRT junk info, coffee is not that different from audiophiles or wine. Luxury product, real difference…

Mostly true, but unlike high end audio, the best coffee can be bought by most people. The best I’ve ever had was $2US.

The best coffee maker you had was $2 or the best coffee was a cup you bought for $2? If the latter, I'm sure the equipment and training that went into that was in the thousands of dollars range.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#195

Post by anotherevan »

I have several different manual brewers in my collection: an aeropress, a french press, a couple of different sized coffee siphons, and a few different sized mokapots.

This is paired with a decent quality electric grinder.

For day to day, just making a coffee for myself, I find the aeropress is the best. Makes a good coffee, is quick, and the clean-up afterwards is the absolute easiest. Use with metal filter, not paper, and either the inverted brewing technique or a prismo to avoid leakage while brewing.

Mokapots are also pretty good overall, especially if making several coffees. The process is not particularly tweakable though if you are wanting to fine tune. Like the aeropress, clean-up afterward is pretty easy.

The siphons are great when you want to feel like a mad scientist. It is time consuming but fun to watch. Once the novelty wears off go back to the aeropress for your day to day brew. I've eschewed the cloth filter for either paper or metal.

French press, to me, is okay but doesn't have much by way of advantages over the above methods. Clean-up afterwards is a chore, uses the most water (if you pre-heat) and takes about as long as any other way.

Each brings something a little different to the final result.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#196

Post by PascLeRasc »

sickrumbear wrote: post #161
cooooooffffeeee wrote: post #61

I just cold brew my coffee. Amazon has a good reusable filter that drops in to a large mason jar. I make 3-4 jars a week (You literally just add ground coffee, water, and wait 24 hours). Even mediocre beans taste pretty good as cold brew.

could you link to the filter and note your process? I'd be very interested in making my own cold brew!

I'm not the guy you responded to, but I really love my cold brew maker: https://www.amazon.com/Hario-Mizudashi-Cold-Coffee-1000ml/dp...

It's super easy to clean, makes a week's worth (at least for me), lets you serve directly from it, and I think it looks really good.

Whatever you do, make sure you use coarse-ground beans. They extract so much more flavor than medium or fine, in my experience.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#197

Post by stcredzero »

joezydeco wrote: post #191
stcredzero wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My alternative for about $45 US in equipment. Buy an Aeropress (~$30) and a cheap hand burr grinder from Amazon. (~$11) Always buy freshly roasted beans. Read and follow the instructions that come with Aeropress. Water temperature matters! Stirring duration matters! But if you can simply follow instructions, it's very easy to get consistent results. If you're a bit lazy, you can substitute a cheap blade grinder, and…

I’m super lazy. I skip all the beans and grinding and just use Cafe Bustelo. It’s great coffee and works really well in an Aeropress. $4 per 10 ounce can.

You can make most anything halfway decent taste good or at least non-offensive with an Aeropress. Just reduce extraction time and increase or decrease temperature.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#198

Post by js2 »

js2 wrote: post #162
troxwalt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you recommend searching for used espresso gear? ebay?

I've got a stainless steel Gaggia Classic I'll send you for the cost of shipping if you'd like. I got it refurb and was never able to get a consistent shot out of it, but I don't know how much of that was due to the machine vs user error. Anyway, I got tired of pouring sour shots down the sink, so I cleaned it and put in storage years ago. It's probably $30-50 to ship given its size and weight. My email is in my prof…

Claimed.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#199

Post by e12e »

linsomniac wrote: post #119

We got a Moccamaster 3-ish years ago, and honestly I haven't been that happy with the coffee it makes. But we also don't have a grinder, so we are using preground beans. But those same beans when run through a Chemex pourover taste dramatically different. Even though the Moccamaster is meant to mimic the pour over brew. I have switched to the Chemex, partly because as this article says I am liking the process. Partly…

Are you diligent with cleaning / rinsing the moccamaster? Makes a huge difference in my experience. And you need to keep it much cleaner than most people do. That's another benefit of pour-over - I've never had any issues re:cleaning a simple v60 setup.

Re: Handbrewing Coffee

#200

Post by Yetanfou »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #10
Yetanfou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you lost a neutral or even positive while gaining a negative here: lost is the ability to drink a common beverage without feeling bad about being uncultured, gained is a dependency on commercial brands - Aeropress and Chemex - and related niche products - in this case African coffee - as well as a related ritual - 'hand-brewing coffee'. In both cases you satisfied your thirst for caffeine, the differen…

Hey that describes pretty much any food preference? We should all learn to live with terrible cooking too? On that note, I had two total lunch fails last week. Food delivered to the table, that I couldn't eat. Is it the phase of the moon? The political climate? The cold weather?

It doesn't describe general food preferences like 'hamburger' or 'croque monsieur' [1], at least that is not my intention. What it is meant to describe is, in the context of the first of the above examples, ruing the day one would have to go without a grass-fed aged Argentine Angus beef burger with ecological Ruccola from the western slopes of Hamburger Hill in northern California, topped with a slice of late-harvest heritage Tuscany tomato and Syrian course-ground ecological pepper on a sourdough Spelt-and-Wheat bun.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croque_monsieur

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